Friday started off like a normal day...I left for work and said goodbye to Jodi and Tirzah. Tirzah had to follow me out and get her fair share of hugs and kisses and show a little of the normal "Dad is leaving and I'm not happy" attitude. Andy and Rae Rae were still asleep but Tirzah was sure to give them their kisses from Dad once they woke. Work was not very eventful like most days but I knew I had to leave early because we had an appointment in town. Like usual, I rushed home, changed and we were off. As I walked out of the bank Jodi said she had forgot a document at home that we needed at our appointment so we drove the quick mile back to the house and she went inside to get it. She thought she knew where it was but she wasn't sure. After looking through two or three boxes where she thought it was, we left without finding it. Now remember this is Jodi we're talking about..and leaving the house with boxes on our bed and on the floor of our bedroom probably never left her mind the whole time we were away. We made it to our appointment on time with no problems other than I have to take the document we later found in next week. We spent a nice evening as a family running around doing the usual....I had to get new boots, we checked out the new BEVMO, went out to dinner and stopped at the grocery store.
When we got home is was getting late so we put the kids to bed and headed to our room to find the boxes right where we left them.....out of their place. At first glance you would think these boxes were holding a bunch of junk. They were very disorganized with a lot of papers and cards and things like that. As I walked back into the room after leaving for a minute I saw Jodi sitting down reading and I wasn't sure what it was. I realized that these boxes, all three of them, held almost every single note, card and letter I had ever written to Jodi. Wow! She had saved all of this stuff over the last 17 years and I was amazed that someone would care so much to keep it all. Sure, there were special things that I could see holding on to but every little note seemed to be there. She had also kept dried flowers, old bouquets and photographs. There were also tickets stubs to all the trips to Disneyland, baseball and hockey games, plays, movies, etc. This set us both into a great adventure that seemed to cover our entire life together. She found her diary from when we first met and throughout our first year together and we read most of it together. It was great to relive some of those special memories after all these years. She had even kept a little ripped Peirce of mail that she used to write down my phone number the very first time!
When I woke up Friday morning I never imagined that it would end the way it did. I have the best wife in the whole world. We sat for hours together just reading and talking and looking back at all of our years together. I realized that I don't write letters or notes the way I used to....at least not with the internet and text messaging. It's easier to send an email or a quick message and while those can be saved and read again, it just isn't the same to have something hand written and stashed away somewhere. Someday when we are long gone, our kids will look through this stuff and wonder why we wrote things down at all.
Thank you Jodi Rae for taking the time to preserve all of these great memories. I look forward to adding many more peices to those treasure boxes. You're the best!
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